colonization of the «indies». the origin of …...2005/12/30 · the spanish colonization of the...

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COLONIZATION OF THE «INDIES»THE ORIGIN OF INTERNATIONAL LAW?

MARTTI KOSKENNIEMI

It is widely agreed that international law has its origins in the writings of theSpanish theologians of the 16th century, especially the so-called «School of Sala-manca», who were reacting to the news of Columbus having found not only anew continent but a new population, living in conditions unknown to Europeansand having never heard the gospel. The name of Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1492-1546) the Dominican scholar who taught as Prima Professor with the theology fa-culty at the University of Salamanca from 1526 to 1546, is well-known to interna-tional law historians. This was not always the case. For a long time, internationallawyers used to draw their pedigree from the Dutch Protestant Hugo de Groot (orGrotius) (1583-1645) who wrote as advocate of the Dutch East-India company infavour of opening the seas to Dutch commerce against the Spanish-Portuguesemonopoly. Still in the 18th and 19th centuries, the law of nations —ius gentium—was seen as a predominantly Protestant discipline that drew its inspiration fromthe natural law taught by such followers of Grotius as the Saxon Samuel Pufen-dorf (1632-1694) and the Swiss Huguenot Emer de Vattel (1714-1767), followedby a series of professors at 18th century German universities1.

It was only towards the late-19th century when the Belgian legal historian Er-nest Nys pointed to the Catholic renewal of natural law during the Spanish siglode oro that attention was directed to Vitoria and some of his successors, especiallythe Jesuit Francisco Suárez, (1548-1617), who had indeed developed a universallyapplicable legal vocabulary —something that late— 19th century jurists, includingNys himself, were trying to achieve2. The Spaniards had adopted from Aquinasthe old Roman law notion of ius gentium and through it had managed to cons-

1 See further my «The Advantage of Treaties. International Law in the Enlightenment», 13 The Edin-burgh Law Review (2009), 27-67.

2 NYS, Ernst, Les origines du droit international (Brussels, Castaignes 1894). For the late-19th centuryproject of which Nys was a part, see KOSKENNIEMI, Martti, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. the Rise andFall of International Law 1870-1960 (Cambridge University press, 2001).

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truct a legal world that seemed astonishingly familiar for late-19th century obser-vers. Nys was followed by James Brown Scott (1866-1943), assistant of the US Se-cretary of State Elihu Root, who made official the theory of the Spaniards as thepredecessors of Grotius and thus, also, as having initiated modern internationallaw3. Scott read to this law his own aspirations as well as those of his Secretaryof State, both engaged during the inter-war years in an effort to give shape to anew architecture of international institutions and systems of dispute-settlementand would enable the emergence of an interdependence-driven global structure ofprivate rights and economic exchanges; a world united in search for peace throughprosperity. This would vindicate the liberal policies of Britain and the United Sta-tes so that it was not for nothing that the two flags that were flown at the inau-guration of the Peace Palace in the Hague in 1907 that would eventually housethe Permanent Court of International Justice were those of the Netherlands andthe United States, and that it was the American industrialist and philanthropist An-drew Carnegie (1835-1919) who stood on podium with the Dutch royal family atthat key moment4.

* * *

The Spanish colonization of the Indies stands at the origin of international law.But this is not only because it offered a legal language to organise the relationsbetween Europeans and the «natives» and to coordinate imperial activities betwe-en the Europeans themselves. That aspect of the matter was, I want to suggest,accompanied by the even more significant adoption by Vitoria and his followersof a politico-theological vocabulary that would extend a certain idea about thejustice of private relationships on a universal basis. The Spanish theologians andjurists reacted to the conquest by reading the Roman law notion of dominiumthorough a theory of virtue they had learned from Aquinas. That reading sugges-ted to them that the relations of power among humans could be separated intopublic law jurisdiction (dominium iurisdictionis) and private ownership (domi-nium proprietatis) in a way that we will immediately recognise as familiar. Fromnow on, these two types of power would operate so as to facilitate and coordi-nate the pursuit of private property through commercial and economic activitiesall around the world. Today’s globalisation means the universal application of

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3 BROWN SCOTT, James, The Catholic Conception of International Law. Francisco de Vitoria &Francisco Suárez (Washington, Carnegie Endowment for Peace 1934).

4 See CALVIN DE ARMAND, Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference.American Diplomacy and International Organization 1899-1914 (Duke University Press, 1975), 259.See further, Martti Koskenniemi, «The Ideology of International Adjudication and the 1907 Hague Con-ference» in Yves Daudet (ed), Topicality of the 1907 Hague Conference, the Second Peace Conferen-ce/Actualité de la Conférence de La Haye de 1907, Deuxième Conférence de la paix (The Hague, Brill,2008), 127-152.


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principles of private property and contract – against which the role of States is li-mited to keeping order in and seeing to the welfare of territorial communities. Tohave provided the legal vocabulary to make this possible is the lasting heritageof the School of Salamanca.

1. THE SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA

The School of Salamanca and especially its «founder» Francisco de Vitoria ha-ve been object of a great number of analyses that have focused on the «Black Le-gend» of Spanish colonization. During and after the Franco regime, Spanish his-toriography tended to produce more or less apologetic interpretations of theSchool. Castilla Urbano summarises that scholarship in the following way:

«no era estudiado per se, sino por una filosofía que estaba a medio camino entre elmoderno derecho internacional y la caridad cristiana; entre la justificación del pre-sente y la dignificación selectiva del pasado»5.

Since then, the situation has somewhat changed. The 29 volumes of the Cor-pus Hispanorum de Pace (CHP) produced in Madrid in the 1980’s and 1990’s con-tain a huge amount of primary materials on the 16th century colonisation and therelevant Spanish debates. But the interpretive essays still carry traces of earlier po-lemics. That the leading participant in that venture —Luciano Pereña— has titledhis summary of the 16th century Spanish activities as La idea de justicia en la con-quista de América shows that focus of recent studies has been to craft a com-promise between acceptance of the catastrophic effects of colonisation on Indiancommunities while highlighting the good intentions of the Crown of Castile, of-ten counselled by the university theologians and jurists, including the leading cri-tic of the manner of the colonization, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), theBishop of Chiapas

6. The same may be said of the work by the American Lewis

Hanke who struck at the Anglo-American habit of distinguishing between the(«bad») colonization by Spain and the («civilized») one of the liberal empires: forHanke, too, though the result of the colonization was disastrous, it was still ofteninspired by noble motives about trusteeship and conversion. «No European na-tion», Hanke wrote, «took her Christian duty towards native peoples as seriouslyas did Spain»7. When Scott resuscitated Vitoria as the originator of internationallaw, he interpreted the Salamanca school as flickering light of humanitarian sa-

COLONIZATION OF THE « INDIES» - THE ORIGIN OF INTERNATIONAL L AW?

5 CASTILLA URBANO, Franciso, El pensamiento de Francisco de Vitoria. Filosofía, política e indioAmericano (Barcelona, Anthropos, 1992) 30.

6 PEREÑA, Luciano, La idea de justicia en la conquesta de América (Madrid, Mapfre 1992). 7 HANKE, Lewis, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Dallas, Southern Met-

hodist University Press, 1949/2002), 175.


nity in a century of colonizing euphoria8. Flattering for international lawyers, theinterpretation offered an anachronistic view of Vitoria that was largely torn fromits theologico-political context9. This was pointed to by the German interwar con-servative lawyer Carl Schmitt whose own interpretation of Vitoria, however, re-mained equally hostage of his project – demonstrating how later interpretationsdistorted Vitoria’s apparent «neutrality» or «objectivity» as inaugurating modern uni-versalism and its «discriminatory» concept of war10.

More recently, Vitoria’s role in illustrating the colonial origins of internationallaw has been laid out by such lawyers and writers as Antony Anghie, Henri Mé-choulan, China Miéville and Robert Williams11. Vitoria’s humanitarianism, so theargument goes, legitimated conquest and made colonisation on a permanent ba-sis not only possible but an outright religious necessity. Vitoria and his followers,these scholars argue, initiated the idea of Europe’s «civilizing mission» that wastranslated into various types of trusteeship imposed by successive European em-pires over the non-European world. Perhaps predictably, this interpretation hasbeen also challenged by recent authors pointing to the humanizing effect that Vi-toria and his colleagues had on Spanish colonial legislation at the time and on theethics of warfare ever since12. Vitoria’ «cosmopolitanism», as it emerged from hislectures, was undoubtedly born of religious doubts about the justice of the waythe conquest was being carried out. And in retrospect, it is astonishing to whatextent the theologians were able to debate and challenge the policies of their king– even as Charles V himself famously suffered from pangs of conscience aboutthe events in the Indies. But it was also so open-ended that it could easily beused, and was used, to support contrary policies13. Notoriously, even in his firstpublic lecture (relectio) on the Indians of 1539 Vitoria vacillated between accep-

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8 BROWN SCOTT, James, The Catholic Conception of International Law. Francisco de Vitoria &Francisco Suárez (Washington, Carnegie Endowment for Peace 1934).

9 For a discussion, see Rossi, CHRISTOPHER R., Broken Chain of Being: James Brown Scott and theOrigins of Modern International Law (The Hague, Kluwer 1998), 114-133 and passim.

10 SCHMITT, Carl, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin, Duncker& Humblot, 1988), 69-96.

11 ANGHIE, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge Uni-versity Press (2004), 13-31; Henri Méchoulan, Le sang de l’autre ou l‘honneur de Dieu. Indiens, juifs et mo-risques au Siècle d’Or (Paris, Fayard 1979), 62-67 and 85-90 (concluding on Vitoria’s views on the Indiansthat «tout cela ne manifeste pas le moindre trace d’universalisme ni de comprehension du drame indien.Le droit de Vitoria est le droit du plus fort», 89): China Miéville, Between Equal Rights. A Marxist Theory ofInternational Law (Leiden, Brill 2005), 173-178; Robert A. Williams Jr., The American Indian in Western Le-gal Thought. The Discourses of Conquest (New York, Oxford 1990), 96-107.

12 As attempted e.g. by CAVALLAR, Georg, «Vitoria, Grotius, Pufendorf, Wolff and Vattel. Accomplices ofEuropean Colonialism and Exploitation or True Cosmopolitans?», 10 Journal of the History of InternationalLaw, (2008), 181- 209; and ZAPATERO, Pablo, «Legal Imagination in Vitoria. The Power of Ideas», 11 Journalof the History of International Law (2009), 221-271, especially (on Anghie and Brett Bowden), 267-271.

13 URBANO, Francisco de Vitoria, supra note 5, 317-323.


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ting that the Indians were fully humans on the one hand, and, on the other, thatthey were «nevertheless so close to being mad, that they are unsuited to settingup or administering a commonwealth both legitimate and ordered in human andcivil terms»14. There can be no real doubt that Vitoria and his successors were con-vinced of the superiority of the Spanish over the Indians as well as on their rightto penetrate Indian territories for the purpose of trade and proselytising. Whate-ver the problems with colonization, at no point did Vitoria or the principal re-presentatives of the Salamanca school advocate Spanish departure from the In-dies. Civilization and trusteeship remained their objective.

What interests me in Vitoria and his successors here, however, is how theirresponse to the conquest through the twin argument from dominium and ius gen-tium developed into a kind of universal sociology or philosophical anthropologythat far from being limited to marginal aspects of external State policy becamefoundational for the idea of universal law divided in two parts: a public law go-verned structure of diplomatic relations and war on the one hand, and a worldof individual private rights that set up a global system of economic relationshipson the other. Previous examinations of the legacy of Vitoria have concentrated onthe former and thus on formal European imperialism. I want to look briefly athow the Salamancans’ interest in private rights develop into a universal system ofexchanges that can even be enforced by war, if necessary – that is to say, I wantto highlight their role in constructing what Justin Rosenberg has called «the em-pire of civil society»15.

2. VITORIA’S REACTION TO THE CONQUISTA

Dominican scholars and missionaries, often trained by Vitoria or his collea-gues, played a key role in the definition of the official Spanish position regardingthe status and treatment of the Indians. Concern over the behaviour of the con-quistadores was a strong motivating factor for their engagement. They had beenshocked by the destruction by Cortés of the Aztec empire on the Yukatakan pe-ninsula («Tierra firma») in 1519-1521 and Pizarro’s killing of the Inca ruler Atahual-pa and the consequent plundering of the Inca riches and destruction of the Incaregime during 1531-1539. And they were concerned over the «encomienda» sys-tem of distributing Indians to the settlers to carry out forced labour first all over


14 VITORIA, Francisco de, «On the American Indians», in A Pagden & J Lawrance eds., Political Wri-tings, (Cambridge University Press 1991), § 18 (290). See also Méchoulan, Le sang de l’autre, supra note 11,62-67.

15 ROSENBERG, Justin, The Empire of Civil Society. A Critique of the Realist Theory of InternationalRelations (London, Verso 1994).


the colonised territory. The former events raised the question of the basis of Spa-nish title, the latter the nature of Indians as human beings and the legal rules go-verning the relations among actors from different cultures. In a famous letter to fe-llow Dominican Miguel de Arcos, Vitoria wrote that stories of conquistadorbehaviour in Peru «freezes the blood in my veins». «The Indians», he wrote, were«most certainly innocent in this war»16. Nevertheless, even as Vitoria and his succes-sors were critical of Spanish behaviour, they did not doubt the justice of the Spa-nish presence in the Indies, their right to travel and evangelize in Indian territory.But on what basis were the relations between the Indians and the Spanish to beconducted? What law applied to the relations between Christians and the infidel?

When Columbus left for the New World in 1492, no serious debate had been wa-ged on the legal basis of his action. Potential problems had been resolved in the Tre-aty of Aleaçhas and Toledo of 1479-1480 where Portugal abandoned its claims to theCanaries in exchange for the Spanish consent to respect Portuguese trade in Africa17.Spain’s title was derived from the Siete partidas (Third Part, Title 28, Law 29) thatembodied the Roman law notion of islands belonging to their first occupant in ac-cordance with the rules of the occupant of the sea in which the island was found18.The famous mediation by the Pope was only required as Portugal claimed the Is-lands as part of the Azores. The line set up in the Pope’s five letters that include theInter caetera of 5 May 1493 were slightly amended and reaffirmed by the Treaty ofTordesillas a year later19. The aim of Columbus’s voyage had been exclusively eco-nomic. Evangelisation had became part of the plan only by Queen Isabella’s famous«testament» of 1504 that also spoke of the «civilization» of the Indians20.

Among to first scholars to discuss the matter in the first decade of the 16th centuryhad been Vitoria’s teacher from his Paris period, the Scottish nominalist John Mair(1467-1550) who analysed Indians as natural slaves in the Aristotelian tradition21. Thiswas incompatible with Isabella’s testament, however, and even the Crown’s lea-

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16 VITORIA, Francisco de, Letter to Miguel de Arcos OP, 8 November [1534], in Political Writings, su-pra, note 14, 331, 332.

17 For the treaty, see John Parry & Rachel Keith (eds), New Iberian World. A Documentary History ofthe Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century. Vol I: The Conquerors and the Con-quered (New York, Times books, 1984), 266-271.

18 ESCAMILLA-COLIN, Michèle, «La question des justes titres: repères juridiques. Des bulles Alexan-drines aux Lois de Burgos», in Carmen Val Julian (ed.), La conquète de l’Amérique espagnole et la questiondu droit (Fontenay-aux-Roses, ENS 1996), 86-87.

19 For these documents, see. Parry & Keith, New Iberian World, supra note 17, 271-280. 20 Escamilla-Colin, «La question des justes titres», supra note 18, 92-93. 21 See PAGDEN, Anthony, The Fall of Natural man,. The American Indian and the origins of Com-

parative Ethnology (Cambridge University Press 1982), 38-52; URBANO, Francisco de Vitoria, supra note 5,212-218 and e.g. JANSSEN, Dieter, «Die Theorie der gerechten Krieges im Denken des Francisco de Vito-ria», in Frank Grunert & Kurt Seelmann, Die Ordnung der Praxis. Neue Studien zur spanische Spätscholas-tik (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 2001), 207-208.


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ding legal expert, Juan Lopez Palacios Rubios (c, 1450-1524), whom King Ferdi-nand enlisted to examine the matter in 1512 after the first complaints of Spanishbehaviour had come to his ears, rejected the view of Indians as natural slaves22.In his study Palacios Rubios affirmed that Indians were indeed humans and assuch entitled to private possessions and public law jurisdiction. However, he ba-sed Spanish presence on the old hierocractic theory of the pope as the Lord ofthe World and wrote this into the infamous requerimiento that was to be read tothe Indians before war against them could be undertaken23.

However, when the conquistadores returned from the Indies, many of them hadgrave doubts of conscience weighing upon them. And so they flocked the Conventof St Esteban in Salamanca where Vitoria and many of his colleagues lived, to con-fess their sins, and to seek absolution. But what kind of a sin was it to take infidelproperty, to kill an Indian and to occupy their land? Vitoria was a religious scholarand he needed to teach his students about the nature of the Spanish activities so asto prepare them to manage the sacrament of penance properly – were the Spanishactivities sinful, and if so, how grave? Vitoria included a discussion of the Indianquestion in his lectures on the Summa theologiae of Aquinas of 1534-35 and in threefamous public lectures (relectiones) held in 1537-1539. In all of these, Vitoria con-cluded that the Indians were rightful owners of their property and that their chiefsvalidly exercised jurisdiction over their tribes. This had already been the position ofPalacios Rubios. But Vitoria went on to deny the latter’s theory of the pope as Lordof the World. Neither the pope nor the emperor —Vitoria’s sovereign, Charles V—had a rightful claim over Indian lives or property. No violent action could be takenagainst them, nor could their lands or property be seized, unless the Indians had cau-sed harm or injury («iniuria») to the Spanish by violating the latter’s lawful rights24.

To make this argument, Vitoria’s starting-point was that under natural law, asaffirmed by tradition going back to the Church fathers and accepted by Aquinas,no human being had natural dominion over another. Under it, everyone was bornfree and property was held in common25. Judged by natural law, however, not


22 LÓPEZ DE PALACIOS RUBIOS, Juan, De las Islas del Mar Océano (México, Fondo de cultura eco-nómica 1954).

23 The story of the composition and later use of the Requerimiento has been told in many places. Seee.g. SEED, Patricia, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World 1492-1640 (Cambrid-ge University Press, 1995), 69-99; Hanke, Spanish Struggle for Justice, supra note 7, 31-41; PEREÑA, La ideade justicia, supra note 6, 31-44; URBANO, Francisco de Vitoria, supra note 5, 208-232 (on all the debatesfrom 1492 to the Requerimiento).

24 VITORIA, Francisco de, «On the American Indians», in A Pagden & J. Lawrance (eds.), Political Wri-tings (Cambridge University Press 1991), Q 2 A 1-2 (252-264) and «On the Law of War», Q1 a 3 § 13 (303-304).

25 »Non cognoscit jus naturale differentiam inter homines, quia quidquid habet unus, est alterius dejure naturali», VITORIA, Francisco de, Comentarios a la Secunda secundae de Santo Tomás [ComST II-II],(Edition preparada por Vicente Beltrán de Heredia (Salamanca, 1934/1952) Tomo III, Q 62 A 1 n. 18 (75).


only the conquest, but every aspect of 16th century European life —continuouswarfare between European rulers, the emergence of an international system oftrade based on private property and the search for profit— were a moral abomi-nation. One could not argue on the basis of natural law and hold the present go-vernment in Europe anything but a criminal conspiracy – as some such as the no-torious Juan de Mariana (1536-1624) suggested. Humans could be ruled onlythrough force, Mariana wrote, and nothing but the threat of tyrannicide would ke-ep rulers from oppressing their subjects26.

But Vitoria would not go that way; he lumped Machiavellian amoralism toget-her with protestant irrationalism. He was thus in a bind. On the one hand, thecould not endorse a divinely created natural law —an ethic of love— without un-dermining the policies of his Emperor not only in the Indies but everywhere. Onthe other hand, he could not endorse the raison d’état either, without appearingjust like the cynical apologists of power Luther had always accused Catholicchurchmen of being. He needed a vocabulary that would accept the basic con-temporary forms of territorial government, private ownership and war but thatwould nevertheless restate the unity of humankind under God. This was provi-ded to him by the twin vocabulary of dominium and ius gentium, the former co-vering a particular theory of forms of lawful human power, the latter extendingthat theory to be applicable everywhere.

The first question that Vitoria had to pose was how, if natural law providedfor human freedom and the ownership of all property was in common, was it atall possible for humans to exercise jurisdiction over each other and to own pro-perty. In the lectures on the Summa that Vitoria gave to his students during 1534-35 he formulated the issue in this way:

«But if it is the case that God made everything to be owned by all, and humanbeings are the common owners of everything by natural law, how and from whichfacts follows the division of things? [This division] is not made by natural law. Fornatural law is always the same and never varies»27.

And Vitoria stated the obvious conclusion in his famous relectio on the In-dians, «dominion and supremacy (praelatio) were introduced by human law, notnatural law»28. But how could merely human law possibly deviate from a divinely

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26 MARIANA, Juan de, The King and the Education of the King (De Rege et Regis Institutione), (G.A.Moore intr. & transl. Washington, Georgetown University 1947), Ch V & VI (135-151) and for a discussionof Mariana’s pessimism, see BROWN, Harold E., Juan de Mariana and Early Modern Spanish PoliticalThought (Aldershot, Ashgate 2007).

27 «Sed si ita est quod deus fecit omnia communia omnibus, et homo est omnium dominus iure na-turali, quomodo et unde facta est ista rerum divisio? [This division] non est facta de iure naturali. Patet quiaius naturale semper est idem et non variatur», VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 62 A 1 n. 18, 74-75.

28 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», in Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 2 A 1 (254).


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origined natural law? Hence the issue of concern: where the conquistadors, thetraders, or indeed the emperor himself living in sin?

Vitoria resolved the problem by the usual scholastic way —by making a distinc-tion, namely a distinction between binding and merely recommendatory provisionsof natural law. Freedom and common ownership were not based on a binding pres-cription (praescriptio) but only a recommendation, (concessio). They provided forcommon property but did not prohibit the divisio rerum— either in its public lawform as independent communities or in terms of private property29. The division wasundertaken by consensus – not by a formal consensus but by a «virtual» one («nonaliquo consensu formali, sed virtuali»), by the taking into use of pieces of land andothers following suit. Because this division was valid everywhere it could not havebeen based on the civil law of this or that state. It had to have been undertaken byius gentium30. It followed from this, too, that neither the pope nor the emperor hadany basis for claiming dominium over the whole world. The dominion of Christ hadnot been «of this world» and could not, therefore, have devolved to Peter or the lat-ter’s successors. Nor had such dominion ever been granted to or exercised by the(Roman) emperor31. Dominion lay with all humans on the basis of natural law, andthe communities they had established as well as the properties they divided amongthemselves were rightly theirs on the basis of the ius gentium32.

In his lecture on the Indians Vitoria makes ius gentium to do a lot of workstarting from the division of territories and properties to supporting the right totravel and to trade, occupation of terrae nullius, citizenship and the despatch ofambassadors. Yet he is frustratingly unclear about its legal nature. In an early lec-ture on civil power (1528), he speaks of the ius gentium as a law enacted by «[t]hewhole world which is in a sense a commonwealth» – a kind of universal positivelaw in other words. In the lecture on the Indians, again, he quotes the old defi-nition by Gaius to the effect that the law of nations is «what natural reason hasestablished among all nations»33, thus apparently collapsing ius gentium into na-tural law. In his treatment of war, Vitoria regards military action in self-defence asnatural law while admitting that even «custom may establish the right and autho-rity to wage war»34.

But Vitoria was not too concerned over legal classifications. In his lectures onthe Summa, he admitted that whether ius gentium was called natural or positive


29 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 62 A 1 n 20 (77).30 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 62 A 1 n 23 (79).31 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», in Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 2 A 1 & Q 2 A 2, (252-

264). 32 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 62 A n 22-27 (78-81). 33 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», in Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 3 A 1 § (278). 34 VITORIA, «On the Law of War», in Political Writings, supra note 14, Q.1 A 2 (302).


was only a terminological issue35. The important point —a point often overlookedby commentators— was that he followed Aquinas in locating the substance of iusgentium in the latter’s systematic theology as part of «justice» (iustitia) and not atall the discussion of «law» (ius). It was not a part of the external directives for hu-man action, but of the internal directives —of the virtues— and more specificallyof the other-related virtue of (commutative) justice36. It had to do with finding theright relationship with others in the context of actual (political) communities. Atthe heart of commutative justice Vitoria found the Roman law concept of domi-nium, in both of its senses as jurisdiction and ownership. If the prince had do-minium over his commonwealth this was because the community had delegatedit to him37. And it was through dominium that Vitoria would analyse not only Spa-nish rights in the Indies, but also, and above all, the rights and duties of Spanishand foreign travellers and traders engaging in manifold commercial activitieseverywhere in the world. All humans had dominium over their actions as part oftheir natural liberty. It was in this that they resembled God. And the dominiumthey had as members of commonwealths and over their lives and their goods wasa part of that liberty. From this theological basis, Vitoria derived a theory of indi-vidual rights (of dominium) as well as its universal applicability as the founda-tion of just relationships between all human beings38.

In his lectures on the Indians, Vitoria concluded that all humans enjoy domi-nium in both of its senses as public law jurisdiction and the private individual’sright of property over things lawfully acquired. This right was based on natural lawbut the form of its specific realization had been decided by human communitiesthrough ius gentium. But even if its nature was historical and social, it was uni-versally valid and thus fully applicable to the infidel, too. And finally, as part of atheory of virtue it could be articulated as a subjective right or a faculty that couldnow be used as a universal theory of commutative justice: it would articulate so-cial relations in inter-personal terms, as rightful forms of exercise of dominium.

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35 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25 Q 57 A 3 n 2 (14) and Q 62 A 1 n 23 (79). 36 Or in other words, his was a subjective-right based definition of ius as a «potestas vel facultas con-

veniens alicui secundum leges» (a power of faculty that belonged to somebody in accordance with law),VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25 Q 62 A 1 n 5 (64). For a useful discussion of the theological contextof Vitoria’s theory of dominium, See DECKERS, Daniel, Gerecthigkeit und Recht. Eine Historisch-kritischeUntersuchung der Gerechtigkeitslehre des Francisco de Vitoria (Freiburg, Universitätsverlag 1991), 23-195.

37 This theory is laid out in quite a complicated and partly contradicting way in the early lecture «OnCivil Power», in Political Writings, supra note 14, § 5-8 (9-17).

38 See especially the Vitoria’s commentary on Quaestio 57 of the Secunda secundae , in ComST II-II,supra note 25, Q 57 A 1 (in which Vitoria adopts the Thomistic definition of «ius» as the object of «iusti-tia»), Q 58 A 1 where the definition of «justice« in given terms of providing everyone his due and the dis-cussion of dominium in terms of commutative justice and as a property all humans have in 62 A n 8-17(1-6, 20-21, 67-74). See further Annabel Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature. Individual Rights in Later Scho-lastic Thought (Cambridge University Press 1997), 124-137.


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3. DOMINIUM AS THE FOUNDATION OF A UNIVERSAL SYSTEM OF PRIVATE EXCHANGES

Through the discussion of dominium Vitoria and the subsequent Salamancascholars grounded an extensive right for human beings to appropriate, use, trans-fer or abandon things in accordance with their choice. Such right belonged onlyto rational (human) beings, but it belonged to all of them. Vitoria followed theofficial Church line since the Council of Constance (1414-1418) according towhich neither sin nor infidelity took away dominium; that was why Christiansmay lawfully engage in trade with pagans and the rights of ownership of the lat-ter may be enforced even against the Christians39. But the problem was larger thanabout Indian rights. As Vitoria was teaching, the gold and silver that were beingimported to Sevilla from the Indies and the export opportunities for manufactu-red goods to the Americas, as well as the financing operations related to them,began to create a network of global relations that was transforming the culturaland economic milieu around the Dominicans out of recognition. Commercialoperators (including the Crown itself) were engaged in new types of transactionsfor long-distance trade, monopolies and price-speculation in a moral-legal greyzone that could not leave theologians cold. What to think of the drive to profitson the basis of large-scale exchanges of private property?

For Aquinas, the move from common to private property had an originally uti-litarian basis: «everyone is more diligent in procuring something for himself thansomething which is to belong to all or many»; «human affairs are conducted in amore orderly manner if each man is responsible for the care of something whichis his own» and «a more peaceful state of things is preserved for mankind if eachis contented with his own»40. The Salamanca scholars’ writings follow this direc-tion; their relatively relaxed discussion of profit-making in commercial operationsand usury presuppose the justice of such activities as long as they can be un-derstood as motivated by concern for the livelihood of one’s family or the goodof the commonwealth41. True, many Christians were critical of private property,pointing to biblical passages such as the statement by Jesus about the difficultyof the rich man to ascend to Paradise [Luke 18:25]. But most of them followedAquinas and accepted private property as a pragmatic «addition» to natural law(instead of a sinful deviation from it) and valid overall as ius gentium, a position


39 «Infideles possunt habere tale dominium supra christianos, id est stando in jure naturali, no perditinfidelis dominium suum propter infidelitatem, sed talibus tenentur christiani obedire», VITORIA, ComST II-II supra note 25, Q 62 A 10 § 1 (200).

40 AQUINAS, ST II-II in Political Writing (R.W. Dyson ed, Cambridge University Press, 2002), 66 A 2resp. (208).

41 As especially stressed in SCHUMPETER, Joseph A., Histoire de l’analyse économique. I. L’age desfondateurs (Des origins à 1790) (J-C Casanova trad. Paris, Gallimard 1983), 141-157.


that consolidated within the Church at the latest during the Franciscan povertycontroversy42.

In his massive De iustitia et iure (1556/1556) Domingo de Soto (1494-1560),Vitoria’s contemporary as (Visperas) professor of theology at Salamanca, beganhis discussion of private ownership by attacking Plato’s communist utopia in Ti-maeus and Republic. The effective use of resources requires that each is given hisown property to use and administer. Moreover, only such division ensures theright distribution of burdens between the members of the community. In Paradi-se, there may have been sufficient fruit for everyone. But since the expulsion, hu-mans have had to work in order to earn their living. In such conditions, maintai-ning common property would lead to some working excessively while otherswould simply lay back to enjoy the fruits of others’ labour. The peace, tranqui-llity and friendship sought after by the philosophers would be inevitably thwar-ted43. Moreover, Soto points out following Aristotle, under conditions of commonproperty it would be impossible to cultivate the virtues of generosity and libera-lity. The same fate would befall the virtues of hospitality and gratitude – withoutprivate ownership none of them would serve any point44.

Everything Vitoria and Soto wrote about the laws of contract and inheritan-ce, prices, money, and commerce at home and with foreign countries as wellas of objectives and limits of public power presumes not only the existence butthe beneficial nature of private property and the transactions connected withthem45. Such transactions had been discussed in Roman (civil) law but no sys-temic view of them had emerged until the scholastics brought them under thetitle of commutative justice «intimately bound with the sacrament of confes-

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42 AQUINAS, II-II Q 66 A 2 in Political Writings, supra note 40, 208 and Janet Coleman, «Property andPoverty», in J. H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350-c. 1450 (Cam-bridge University Press, 1988), 621-625. On the Franciscan poverty controversy, see id, 631-648; Brett, Li-berty, Right and Nature, supra note 38, 13-20.

43 SOTO, Domingo de, De iustitia et iure Libri decem / De la justicia y el derecho en diez Libros (Intr.By P.V.Diego Carro, Spanish transl. by P.M. Gonzalez Ordonez, Madrid 1967), Bk IV Q III A 1 (296a-297a).»Hac ergo delira communitate praetermissa…demonstrandum [est] quam sit congruens naturae corruptaepossessionum divisio… nempe ex humana negligentia et ex cupiditate», id. (296b). See also CHAFUEN, Ale-jandro A., Faith and Liberty. The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics (Oxford, Lexington 2003), 33-34.

44 «Qui enim proprium non habet, liberalis esse non potest et qui omnia possidet, alienae liberitatis noneget», SOTO, De justitia et de iure, supra note 43 Bk IV Q III A 1 (297b). See also ARISTOTLE, The Politics(trans. By A.T. Sinclair, rev. and re-pres. By T.J. Saunders, Harmondsworth, Penguin 1981), 1263a (115).

45 In this, they departed significantly from medieval writers who were usually dubious about economicactivity and accepted it only to the extent it was directed towards satisfaction of necessities or caring for offs-pring. See e.g. GARCÍA GARCÍA, Antonio, & ALONSO RODRIQUEZ, Bernardo, «El pensamiento económicoy el mundo del derecho hasta el siglo XVI», in Gómez Camacho & Ricardo Robledo (eds), El pensamientoeconómico en la escuela de Salamanca (Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 1998), 66-75, DIANE WOOD ob-serves that it was the Church that put a brake on economic activity. For «to be socially ambitious, to want tobe upwardly mobile, was a sin», Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3, 2-5.


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sion»46. For Vitoria and Soto were keenly aware that accumulation of wealthcould easily cross the threshold of the sin of avarice. In their commentaries toquestions 77 and 78 of the Secunda secundae they thus balance their utilitaria-nism with their concern for the souls of the merchants by developing an extre-mely detailed casuistic of different types and practices of contracts, usury andother economic operations47.

Following Aristotle, Vitoria distinguishes between two types of ars mercatorum,«natural» exchanges the purpose of which is to see to the good of the household («adusus necessarios hominum») and those «artificial» operations whose point was to pro-duce profit («ad lucrum»). The former was just and lawful but the latter —that is tosay, the practice of buying cheaply and selling expensively— involved great danger(«est valde periculosum») as it involved the temptation of the sin of avarice48. LikeAquinas, however, Vitoria assumed that the justice of profit-making depended ulti-mately on its purpose and he did not wish to discourage activities that were benefi-cial to the commonwealth. What was needed was to learn to discriminate betweensituations. The profit due to the merchant could be justified above all by the changethat had been introduced in the commodity by transporting it from the place whereit was bought to where it will be sold. As the goods were introduced in a locationwhere they was scarce or perhaps not at all available, the merchant was doing a so-cially useful service for which he could be justly awarded («hoc est necessarium adbonum et ad provisionem reipublicae»)49. If profit enabled commerce where it wouldotherwise be lacking, or if it contributed to the good of the community in other ways,it was just. But if it was motivated by only by the desire for private gain —for exam-ple, if the seller waits until the price of the commodity rises— then engaging in it in-volved, depending on the gravity of the matter, either venial or mortal sin50.


46 DUVE, Thomas, «La teoria de la restitución en Domingo de Soto: Su significación para la historiadel derecho privado moderno», in CRUZ CRUZ, Juan, La ley natural como fundamento moral y jurídico enDomingo de Soto (Pamplona, Eunsa, 2007), 190, 187-190.

47 BELDA PLANS, Juan, La escuela de Salamanca y la renovación de la teologia en el siglo XVI (Madrid,Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 2000), 926; BARRIENTOS GARCÍA, José, «El pensamiento económico en laperspectiva filosofico-teologica», in GÓMEZ CARACHO & ROBLEDO, El pensamiento económico, supra note45, 94-95. To give a sense of the detailed nature of the result, it might be noted that the mere discussion of thequestion «whether it is allowed to receive for loan something else than money in exchange» is divided into 75paragraphs that discuss 51 «doubtful cases», many of them developed in several «corollaries», all of which takesfrom the modern Latin edition altogether 68 pages, Vitoria ComST II-II supra note 25, Q 68 A II (167-235).

48 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 77 A 4 § 2 (146). 49 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 77 A 4 § 2 (147).50 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 77 A 4 § 1-2 (141-147). This is in fact a very relaxed standard

—for mortal sin is involved only if profit is actually intended to harm others. If it is motivated only by greed,the sin is only venial— an illustration that Vitoria and the humanists generally were shifting attention fromthe state of mind of the economic operators to the actual injury possibly caused by their operations. GARCÍAGARCÍA, Antonio & ALONSO RODRIQUEZ, Bernardo, «El pensamiento económico y el mundo del derechohasta el siglo XBVI», in GÓMEZ CAMACHO & ROBLEDO, El pensamiento económico, supra note 45, 82.


An especially significant extension of the theory of dominium was the sub-jective (but non-arbitrary) theory of the just price that lies at the heart Vitoria’sviews on commerce51. Drawing on Duns Scotus, Vitoria accepted that the goodson the market had no essential or natural value. He was familiar with the para-dox under which water, though normally of no value, may be sometimes regar-ded as more valuable than gold. But how then, if different people value thingsdifferently, could a just exchange be carried out? To this he responded that thejust price was relative to how a thing is valued in the market («ex communi ho-minum aestimatione vel condicto»)52. That «common estimation», again was a func-tion of many things, including the product’s relative abundance or scarcity. In ot-her words, though price-formation was a subjective process, this did not meanthere was no just price. Instead of regarding price-formation as fully open (he we-re critical of price-manipulation as well as the so-called «dry contracts» that con-tained hidden forms of usury) they fell back on the communis aestimatio53. A re-gular exchange contract was lawful if it involved no fraud or deception, it wascarried out voluntarily (and not through coercion), involved no monopolistic pri-ce-juggling and if there was a «legal price», it had been followed54.

The Salamancans did not see money as just a sign or an instrument of ex-change. It possessed value in itself so that it could also be understood to accu-mulate for investment purposes and exchanged for profit (interest). Vitoria’s ex-tensive treatment of usury opens with an apparently unconditional prohibition ofinterest-taking for loan: money is «sterile» and making it produce contrary to na-tural law55. Nevertheless, in the course of his discussion, he makes several quali-fications to that prohibition and ends up positively endorsing the operations ofthe cambistas, or professional money exchangers (banks), as they provided cre-dit and letters of exchange that enabled merchants to move between fairs in Eu-rope without having to carry large quantities of money with them56. Modest inte-

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51 The just price is not only an economic category in Vitoria and Soto but above all a measure of therequirement of commutative justice in the moral-legal order. It put to practice the need to ensure equalityand reciprocity of exchanges. See WIDOW, Juan Antonio, «Economic Teachings of Spanish Scholastics», inKevin White (ed.), Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery (Washington, Catholic University of Ameri-ca Press 1997), 135-136. Vitoria and Soto were not simply adopting a nominalist position. Although the pri-ce of a commodity was determined subjectively, that determination reflected an objective assessment ofthe situation on the market.

52 VITORIA, ComST II-II, supra note 25, Q 77 A 1 § 2 (117-118). 53 DECKERS, Gerechtigkeit, supra note 36, 247-8.; Chafuen, Faith and Liberty, supra note 43, 82-3. 54 See also CRESPO, Ricardo F., «La posibilidad y justicia del intercambio: De Aristoteles a Marx, pa-

sando por Tómas de Aquino y Francisco de Vitoria», in Juan Cruz Cruz (ed), Ley y Dominio en Franciscode Vitoria (Pamplona Eunsa 2008), 273-275.

55 VITORIA, ComST II-II supra note 25, Q 78 A 1 § 1, 3 (153-154, 155). 56 VITORIA, ComST II-II supra note 25, Q 78 A 2 § 61-75 (223-235). The cambista provides a service

that is useful for the community and for which it is lawful to require a benefit. However, unlike Cajetan,


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rest could be raised for lending activities inasmuch as they facilitated internatio-nal exchanges and created the basis for accumulation that could be useful for in-vestment purposes. The discussion of the lawfulness of financial activities revol-ved around the concept of usury that was treated, of course, as a violation ofcommutative justice and a mortal sin in its many express and implied forms. Incomplicated international exchanges that involved several parties it was of cour-se often difficult to determine the equilibrium or reciprocity commanded by com-mutative justice: one flexible basis for accepting interest was provided by the as-sumption that lending caused some damage to the lender and that interest couldbe understood as a compensation (damnum emergens) even in some instancesfor unattained profit (lucrum cessans)57.

Vitoria and Soto assumed that these economic exchanges would be based ona universal right of dominium and thus applicable all over the world. They wouldprovide, for example, the basis on which Catholic merchants from Spain couldengage in mutually profitable transactions with Islamic or Jewish traders (as theyhad of course done for centuries), travel to Protestant markets in Germany andthe Netherlands and to trade and exchange goods with the inhabitants of the NewWorld. The most famous sketch of this worldwide system of dominium is contai-ned in Vitoria’s discussion of the right of the Spaniards to travel and trade in theIndies (ius pergrinandi & ius negotiandi) that was based on the naturalist theoryof human sociability, accompanied by dominium that was articulated as ius gen-tium. Vitoria portrays trade and commerce as part of the «natural partnership and´communication» between humans. Since the beginning of times, «everyone wasallowed to visit and travel through any land he wished [and t]his right was clearlynot taken away by the division of property (divisio rerum)58. It was a practicalconsequence of this that all nations were to show hospitality to strangers andeverybody had the right to «all things that were not prohibited or others to theharm or detriment of others»59. This, again, meant that

«Spaniards may lawfully trade among the barbarians, so long as they do noharm to their homeland. In other words, they may import the commodities whichthey lack, and export the gold, silver, or other things which they have in abun-dance; and their princes cannot prevent their subjects from trading with the Spa-niards, nor can the princes of Spain prohibit commerce with the barbarians…. [T]helaw of nations (ius gentium) is clearly that travellers may carry on trade as long as


Vitoria extends this right beyond professional bankers to the transactions that merchants do on a perma-nent basis and that have the objective of facilitating long-distance trade (but not between nearby cities),id. § 66, 69 (227-228, 229),

57 VITORIA, ComST II-II supra note 25, Q 78 A 2 2 167-168). See also Soto, De iustitia et iure, supranote 43, Bk VI Q I A 1 and A 3 (508a-514b, 521b-525b).

58 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 3 A 1 § 2 (278). 59 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 3 A 1 § 2 (278).


they do no harm to the citizens… [A]ny human enactment (lex) which prohibitedsuch trade would indubitably be unreasonable»60.

And to make sure that he is not only discussing some special (colonial) rela-tionship between the Spanish and the Indians, Vitoria adds that these principlesare the same as those applying between Christian commonwealths. For the Spa-nish or the French kings to intervene in the travel of private traders would be «un-just…and contrary to Christian charity»61.

All of this begins to sketch an international system of commerce, based on thefree use of their dominium by private merchants and bankers that the princes we-re not entitled to impede62. The extent of dominium was wide, covering use andnon-use, trading and exchange as well as throwing away of the object. The prin-ce was not entitled to intervene in his subjects’ use of private property «unless thisis necessary for the defence and government of the nation»63. Nor could he limithunting, fishing, or collecting firewood from the forest, without just cause. Theright to use all this flows from the original natural law provision that humans mayuse everything that is necessary for their conservation64. If the ruler abused hisauthority, he committed a crime and had the obligation to restore the property ta-ken65. To expropriate subjects arbitrarily —something that had been a persistentreality in 15th century Spain— would turn the prince into a tyrant and trigger theright of resistance of the commonwealth. Expropriation was possible only whenthe prince had a permissible causa, that is to say, only so far as needed by thecommonwealth – «[b]eyond that, man must not only have his own rights as an in-dividual, but he must also have their exercise in his own control: in other words,he must be sui iuris, have dominium of himself or his liberty»66.

These views on economic relations, dominium, commerce, price-formationand usury were largely accepted and defended by the subsequent generations ofSpanish scholastics67. The Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600) , for example, ex-panded the utilitarian justification behind private property. In his De iustitia et iu-re he tells the old story about how the move had taken from natural law-based

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60 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 3 A 1 § 3 (279-280).61 VITORIA, «On the American Indians», Political Writings, supra note 14, Q 3 A 1 § 3 (280).62 BARRIENTOS GARCÍA, «El pensamiento económico», supra note 120. 63 «nisi quando eidem reipublicae tuendae & administrandae necesse fuerint», SOTO, De iustitia et de

iure, supra note 43, Bk IV Q IV A 1 (301a). 64 VITORIA, ComST II-II supra note 25, Q 62 A 1 § 13 (72-73. See also Deckers, Gerechtigkeit, supra

note 36, 210-211. 65 SOTO, De iustitia et de iure, supra note 43 Bk V Q III A 5 (430a). 66 BRETT, Liberty, Right and Nature, supra note 38, 159. 67 See further GRICE-HUTCHINSON, Marjorie, Early Economic Thought in Spain 1177-1740 (London,

Allen & Unwin 1978), 98-102.


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common ownership through the ius gentium into private property. To the objec-tion —«How can human law go against (God-enacted) natural law?»— he retortsthat God had inserted a natural light («lumen naturale») through which it was un-derstood that among sinners, to avoid worse evils, properties needed to be divi-ded. This was not a natural light about what was «necessary» but what was «ex-peditious» («expediens»)68. Again, it was Molina’s Jesuit colleague, Mariana, whochose to interpret this situation in dark, even tragic tones and did not hide hisnostalgia towards the golden age of common property. After the Fall, humanbeings had become selfish and unjust and lived without a sense of natural bene-volence to their communities. Nevertheless, that early situation could no longerbe restored so that not only private property had become a necessary evil but ithad become an urgent imperative to seek to protect it against all kinds of encro-achments constantly planned by corrupt rulers69.

The theory of dominium as the sphere of freedom —especially economic fre-edom— belonging to human beings by ius gentium opened now a wholly newway to speak of universal authority beyond dubious claims about papal or im-perial power. Any statement under the via antiqua that laid out duties connectedwith an office or rule could now be re-described as a statement about what (so-me) human beings had an entitlement to. «And the important thing about the six-teenth-century Spanish theologians and lawyers was that they did frame those is-sues in terms of the individual»70. The universal structure of private rights thatemerges from Vitoria and Soto spoke to popular views about the electoral basis ofSpanish monarchy and bound the ruler —at least in principle— to the original aut-horization to rule in the common good, understood as the free operation of do-minium-rights71. It set up a universal field of economic liberty that could be invo-ked against all holders of public power. Wherever authority was being exercised,it could now be assessed by universal rights of property, self-defence, travel, tra-de, taking of possession of ownerless things and so on72. This was an inevitableconsequence of the fact that Vitoria and Soto dealt with dominium in the contextof commutative and not distributive justice, that is relationships between subjectsthemselves, excluding ideas about the intervention of public power. Chafuen sum-marises the resulting economic views of the Spanish scholastics as follows:


68 MOLINAE, Ludovici, De iustitia et iure. Tomi sex (Antverpiae, Keerberginum, 1615), T II Disp 20(43b).

69 MARIANA, The King and Education of the King, supra note 26, Ch II (115-121). 70 BRETT, Annabel, «The Development of the Idea of Citizens Rights», in Quentin Skinner & Bo Stråth,

States and Citizens. History, Theory, Prospects (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 100. 71 AMBROSETTI, Giovanni, Il diritto naturale della riforma catolica (Milano, Giuffre 1951), 60-61. 72 For the reference to «needs» see, VITORIA, «On Civil Power», Q. 1 Art 2 para. 5, in Political Wri-

tings, supra note 14, 9.


«Late-scholastic theory analyzed profits, wages and rent as matters of commuta-tive justice and applied rules similar to those used to analyze the prices of goods.The Schoolmen determined that wages, profits and rents are not for the govern-ment to decide. Since they are beyond the pale of distributive justice, they shouldbe determined though common estimation of the market»73.

The world was an empire, but an «empire of private rights».

5. EPILOGUE: SUÁREZ

Let me end with the way the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, the most influential ofthe Spanish, develops ius gentium into a historical justification of the most im-portant modern political institutions, including the universal system of privatecommerce. Suarez agreed that natural law provided for freedom, common ow-nership and peace and also that it was not subject to any change74. But its con-tent was often derived only «negatively» from the absence of an express prohibi-tion. In that space of non-prohibition the subjective freedom of humans —theirdominium— operated as their legal right to create commonwealths, to divide andexchange property, to defend themselves and others as well as to see to the go-od of their communities. Natural law, Suárez wrote, left «the matter to the mana-gement of men, such management to be in accordance with reason»75.

This created a difficulty, however. If private property was based on human law– did natural law then have nothing to say about stealing? To strengthen the (sub-jective) dominium-right Suárez referred back to the distinction he had made atthe outset between ius as objective law and ius as subjective right. When naturallaw provides for subjective right, he explains, it does this always as a positive pre-cept. In the original state, everyone had dominium in common with others. Afterthe intervention of divisio rerum, that positive, non-derogable right now attachesto the private property so that stealing will become an evil, subject to punish-ment76. Even if the institution of private property is purely human, in other words,once it is created, it is protected by natural law. This is also a command of faith.Already Soto had made the point that to deny private property was to engage inheresy. Suárez would agree but would provide a better explanation for why thiswas so: not because of utility but because of the nature of subjective ius. None

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73 CHAFUEN, Faith and Liberty, supra note 43, 102-103 (footnote omitted). 74 SUÁREZ, Francisco, «On Law and God the Lawgiver (De legibus, ac Deo legislatore)», in Selections

from Three Works. Vol II the Translation (G. Williams transl., Oxford University Press, 1944) Bk II, Ch XV§ 14 (276) and Bk III, Ch II § 3 (373-374).

75 SUÁREZ, On Laws and the Lawgiver, supra note 74, Bk II, Ch XIV, § 6 (270).76 SUÁREZ, On Laws and the Lawgiver, supra note 74, Bk II, Ch XIV § 13 and 16-17 (275-277, 278-279).


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of this is to say that Suárez would turn out having the preferences of the modernliberal. In fact, his view of the sphere of liberty of the individual in society is verylimited. But the authoritarian basis of his view of the government of the com-monwealth is based on an liberal argument from individual liberty: «for the veryreason that man is lord of his own liberty, it is possible for him to sell or aliena-te the same»77.

Suárez takes great trouble to distinguish the customary nature of ius gentiumfrom natural law, developing the former into a positive law process of law-crea-tion, a system of ruling the world by constant interaction between peoples andtheir sovereigns, each operating their dominium so as to adjust to changing cir-cumstances. The distinction between natural law was between that which is in-trinsically necessary and that which contributed to the attainment of the neces-sary in the real conditions of the social world. Suárez gives two examples:diplomatic and commercial exchanges. Peace is dictated by natural law and thefunction of the ambassador is to contribute to peace. However, this does not ma-ke diplomacy part of natural law. Other means may lead to peace as well so thatwhile the use of ambassadors may be useful, it is not necessary. Hence its natu-re as ius gentium, and not as natural law. It is part of the way humans have co-me to look for the good of their communities. The same argument applies to in-ternational commerce. Trade is by no means intrinsically necessary. But it may beuseful for the good of nations. Thus, like diplomatic relations, trade has been es-tablished by the customary activities under the ius gentium and —like the sub-jective rights on which trade relations are based— once they have been establis-hed, they are binding. Let me quote Suárez:

«…it has been established by the ius gentium that commercial intercourse shall befree, and it would be a violation of that system of law if such intercourse wereprohibited without reasonable cause»78.

In other words, humankind has certain positive institutions —sovereignty, pro-perty, war, and diplomatic and commercial relations— that enjoy universal vali-dity as ius gentium under customary law. And what is customary law? Suárez nowputs forward the familiar «two-element theory», the view of custom as repetitionof similar acts, accompanied by the conviction that those acts are binding, the opi-nio iuris. He writes: «For a custom will never establish a rule of law by prescrip-tion, even if it lasts a thousand years, unless the frequency of the acts arises fromthe intention of creating a legal obligation»79. But this is not only a theory of cus-


77 SUÁREZ , On Law and God the Lawgiver, supra note 74 Bk II, Ch XIV § 18 (279). See also ReijoWilenius, The Social and Political Theory of Francisco Suárez (Helsinki, Societas Philosophica Fennica1963), 102-108.

78 SUÁREZ , On Law and God the Lawgiver, supra note 74 Bk II, Ch XIX § 7 (347). 79 SUÁREZ, On Law and God the Lawgiver, supra note 74, Bk VII, Ch XV. § 10, (573).


tom. It is the basis for a new kind of normative sociology. The sense of humanpractices, Suárez is now saying, is dependent on what people think of them. Justlike for Vitoria, the value of goods on the market was received from «communisaestimatio», the value of our practices for Suárez, become dependent on how hu-mans view that value. This view grows neither from some extrinsic principle norfrom a vote: it is part of the way the community lives, its members exercising theirrights with the view to virtue and reason. This is a purely secular, fact-based viewof justice. It is the reconception of human relations in ultimately economic terms.

Finally, let me quote the famous distinction Suárez makes between two sen-ses of the ius gentium, each corresponding to a certain way in which the worldis united:

«A particular matter...can be subject to then ius gentium in either one of twoways: first it is the law which all the various nations and people ought to observein their relations with each other; secondly, on the ground that it is a body of lawswhich individual states of kingdoms observe within their borders, but which are ca-lled ius gentium because the said laws are similar [in each instance] and are com-monly accepted»80.

This distinction between public international law as law among states, and theshared aspects of the civil laws of various states has of course become a key partof our understanding of two types of universal law. We separate the two in wa-tertight boxes because we believe they are somehow so utterly distinct: the pu-blic law of sovereignty – the private law of ownership and economic exchanges.That separation now comes from Suárez, together with the clear privileging of thelatter over the former. For even as the private relationships are covered by the ci-vil laws of the various countries, the general principles of those civil laws, inclu-ding above all the freedom of commercial exchanges on the basis of private ow-nership, are still valid as ius gentium and enforceable through all those meansthrough which princes may react to violations of not only their public rights butof any serious injury to dominium irrespective of where it takes place. To disruptcommercial relations is a violation of ius gentium that is punishable by war81.

Spanish imperialism was constituted of the exercise of public power by theSpanish State in the form of conquest and settlement, administration and the con-duct of mercantilistic policies that ultimately failed to uphold the position of Spainas the leading European power. It was followed up by Netherlands and England

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80 SUÁREZ, On Law and God the Lawgiver, supra note 74, Bk II Ch XIX, § 8 (347).81 SUÁREZ, On Law and God the Lawgiver, supra note 74, Bk II Ch XIX, § 7 (347) and on the relevant

grounds of just (aggressive) war in the case of «denial, without reasonable cause, of the common rights ofnations, such as the right of transit over highways, trading in common & cet.», in On The Three TheologicalVirtues: On Charity, Disp XIII: On War, Sect IV § 3 (817) as well as SODER, Josef, Francisco Suárez und dasVölkerrecht. Grundgedanken zu Staat, Recht und internationale Beziehungen (Frankfurt, Metzner, 1973), 261.


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whose political leaders well understood the importance of the Salamancan doc-trines: their imperialism was imperialism of the free trade, carried out by privatecompanies through private transactions, if necessary protected by the public po-wer of the State. National resources would not be wasted when private operatorscould be liberated to carry out the work of disciplining the natives through com-merce and the extraction of resources.

Since decolonization in the 1960’s, Western domination of the «people withouthistory» has returned to its classical mainstay, informal empire, the creation of we-alth and influence and the distribution of material and spiritual resources throughthe exercise of private power. Today’s ius gentium continues to be divided intothe law of treaties on the one side and the law of contract on the other. There isno doubt on which side the more significant aspects of dominium —that is, thepower of human beings over other human beings— is exercised. It is a great pa-radox that Spanish political leaders never really understood that this is what theirbrightest thinkers were prophesying.



colonization of the «indies». the origin of …...2005/12/30 · the spanish colonization of the...

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